The Bottom Line
Due to a dramatic 26 percent year-over-year decline in prices across all pixel-pitch categories in 2016, LED video-display shipments are expected to grow 27.5 percent with 4.9 percent revenue growth this year.
The outdoor-retail category held almost 40 percent of total market share, due to the high brightness and durability of LED video. However, as installation shifts to indoor applications, this market share is expected to drop to 35 percent by 2020.
LED video price erosion and the market’s increasing appetite for higher resolution displays will shift pixel-pitch categories lower, with 2-4.99mm being installed for both indoor and outdoor digital signage applications and 5-9.99mm catering purely to outdoor displays.
With indoor and outdoor retail and public spaces acting as the main driving force, these categories are expected to achieve year-over-year growth of 98 percent and 63 percent, respectively.

The advent of fine pixel pitch technology has opened up new opportunities in Indoor Applications for LED Video, making it a viable competitor to Rear Projection and LCD. In 2015, the <=1.99mm pixel pitch category grew by 279% year over year (YoY). However, will 2016 be another good year for Fine Pixel Pitch LED Video? IHS analyzes the 2016 outlook and strategies for the Fine Pixel Pitch LED Video industry.

The Consumer Technology Association (CTA), continues to advance its agenda to support growth and development in the technology sector. To this end, a billboard positioned in one of the main lobbies was eye catching. It announced the creation of a “State Innovation Scorecard.”

The Americas have been viewed as a major target for the development of smart ticketing in public transportation. Until recently Latin America was driving much of the excitement, as high urbanisation and poverty meant that public transportation was a key target for government investment across the continent.

Shipments of smart payment and banking cards in the United States are projected to increase to just over 502 million in 2015, up from 223 million in 2014, according to latest research from IHS Technology (NYSE:IHS).

In preparation for the release of IHS’ Smart Cards in Transportation Report 2015, in the middle of quarter four, the digital security team has released an opinion of one of the more interesting developments in one of the most prestigious transportation projects in existence.

According to the latest IHS Smart Card Overview Report, there’s a bright future for the smart card industry over the next five years, even though there are some specific regional challenges across certain vertical markets. The total number of smart card shipments is forecast to reach 12 billion units in 2020, with an expected installed base of 26 billion cards.

Shipments of smart card integrated circuits (ICs) are projected to increase from 9.6 billion in 2014 to 10.4 billion in 2015 and to 12.7 billion in 2019, according to latest research titled “Smart Cards Semiconductors Report – 2015”, a component of the Digital Security Intelligence Service from IHS Technology (NYSE:IHS).

According to the report, much of the e-government and healthcare identification (ID) market has previously been focused on large projects in Asia and Europe; however, the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region is one of the more interesting markets to develop recently.

Large governmental projects in the Middle East and Africa have always been seen as risky endeavours that are prone to delays and cancellations as funding issues and legal complications arise. In 2014 there have been some successes in Nigeria and South Africa regarding the development of electronic ID cards. Looking forward to 2015, Egypt looks likely to rollout a new ID card with help from Morpho.
The development of eGovernment projects in the Middle East and Africa have had a few false dawns with big projects in South Africa, Kenya, Iran and Nigeria all being delayed or cancelled. Now in 2015 there seems to be a genuine chance that there will be a significant shift in the prospects of some of the biggest projects in the region.

SDW 2015 conference and exhibition, hosted in London, brought major stakeholders from across the security document ecosystem together. The show was an opportunity to gather the opinion and thoughts of governments, credential manufactures, and industry trade bodies. One of the themes that dominated SDW 2015 was the transition away from the “one function per credential” approach towards multi-application and mobile secure documents.

Apple Pay is coming to UK in July for iPhone 6, 6 Plus and Apple Watch users in over 250,000 locations. It will work with more than 70% of credit and debit cards in the country by autumn. The UK launch is the first international roll out of Apple’s payment service since its US debut in late 2014.

In early 2015 news was dominated by the Mediterranean migrant crisis and the associated tragic loss of life. The whole episode opened the debate about immigration into the European Union and travel between member states. The lack of checks between borders in the Schengen zone means that those migrants and others are very difficult to track.
A potential solution major parties may use to combat this issue is a more collective approach to identity credentials, but with so many disparate identity credentials and systems across countries, more co-operation will be needed.

It was recently announced that after a design win in Apple's iPhone 6 Plus, NXP Semiconductor NV (Eindhoven, the Netherlands) has announced that its near field communications (NFC) chips are going to be used across the breadth of Qualcomm's Snapdragon-based platforms.

The deadline to re-register SIM cards in Pakistan passed on 13 April 2015. The registration of SIM cards using biometric data had been proposed in Pakistan after the Peshawar school terrorist attack in December 2014. The scheme required all SIM card holders to re-register SIM cards not only to the Computerised National Identity Card number, but also to the user’s set of fingerprints.

One of the major developments in the Smart Card industry has been the proliferation of multiple applications on the smartphone that originally would have required separate devices. While the evolution of the payment, transportation and communication segments has drawn big headlines, the important area of eGovernment and Healthcare ID has received less interest.

On 20 March 2015, the GSMA announced a “new online commerce platform” that aims to connect buyers and sellers in the telecommunication industry. The aim of the platform is to allow for the sale of a huge range of products and services that spans the industry, from SIM cards to network management.